Today

we engaged in the most rampant act of commercialism I've ever experienced. Worse than the Royal Easter Show. We went to... Santa's Kingdom. Now, I don't want my deep-seated-yes-I-did-go-to-a-girls-private-school ogre to be fully released. But quite frankly, it blowed. Big time. For starters, it was about 40 degrees in Sydney today, even at home, where we are about 200 metres from the beach and normally smugly look at the nightly weather report and chortle at the high 30s in Penrith and Richmond and thank my Mother for her judicious property decisions over the last thirty years and propensity for martyrdom that enables our life of sea breezes. We thought it therefore a good day for the boys to have a very special treat of a day off school. Now, I am certainly not one for this - I abhore those who take their kids out of school to go on holidays etc as I think it sends a message to said children than somehow their education is expendable, which is isn't. But it's the end of the year, the first year of school for Felix and Oscar had an appointment at the Dental Clinic at the hospital which was near the ill-named Kingdom and being one for expediency, it seemed like a good idea at the time. There was no, or very little, airconditioning in Santa's Suckville. The kids, naturally, loved it. Chef's parents had given us the money for the tickets as a Christmas present. Quite frankly, it was never going to be my scene (I hate crowds, I hate organised 'fun' activities, I hate fairs/markets/fetes) but I knew the kids would love it and well, it seemed the nicer thing to do than actually say we'd rather just take the money. The worst part of these kind of events, and I know it is assurded I'm going to hell for such thoughts, but these kind of things bring out people who think nuggets are a legitimate nutritious dinner. People who call their kids beautiful names like Siobahn but pronounce them shi-vaaaawwwn and all the boys are called Trent, Rory, Nathan, Brett or Cameron and have been on Ritalin without a doubt since they were about two. The most precious have a rats tail hairdo. The women are either in white jeans or leggings if they are coke addicts or leggings and lurid print shirts if they live the nugget dream. They all wear a lot of makeup and lipsticks called Party Pink or suckmycock red. See. Bad. I know I am very very bad. But you also know I am right. Very very right. Did I mention it was a rort, complete rip-off and could actually be up for false advertising? (claiming a one off entry ticket covers everything inside but once in there are Santa photos, a showbag for 'only' $25, which we did not get, and then they stipulate how many times you can go on rides but try to be cute about it by making you get stamps in a passport) Once again I say R.O.R.T.... Here's how it transpired. (Correction: because Blogger is being a dick and not posting my pics it's not as pictorial as I would have hoped...)

The start. Already so hot, so very very hot.

Then we had Oscar's favourite part of the entire experience. Which of course meant he spent the rest of the day wanting to go on the ride-in train again, which isn't an option because it only takes you the 10 metres from the entrance to the entrance. And yes, that is what I mean.

From there it improved dramatically - into some lovely scenes and a cute sugar plum fairy. Then it became commercial, boring and HOT. There was no airconditioning. Don't get me wrong, but my understanding of the North Pole, which this was meant to replicate, never gets above 0C, so how the hell could it possibly be about 28 degrees??? The kids went on rides, Felix loved the snow slope to toboggan down, there was a snowball throwing game which was great until the angry elf came on duty and enforced the two-turns only rule - even though there was no queue and hardly anyone else there. Dumb angry elf. I was angry at myself for not making a scene with her and telling her to get a life. There was ice skating with one particularly chunky-thighed skater which made it really fun. Felix loved it, which I loved because I am moderately obsessed with ice skating and when it was on ESPN yesterday morning between 2.30am and 4.30am I sat up longer than I needed to with Jasper's feed to watch it. The best part, that made us all laugh and have fun - silly mirrors. So sad but true. Anyway, we have sucky photos with Santa (nowhere near as good as the ones from David Jones), the boys loved it - and had a day off school in horrid heat. It ended at Chef's parents place for a swim and impromptu dinner and then surprise cake for me and early presents. So really, all this bitching is so unneccesary.

Jasper after his first swim.

Please note: he was not doing this in the pool, this is the standard screaming post any form of water contact.